Since its inception, devops has been debated in IT circles. Some have considered it a marketing fad; others have believed it will revolutionize IT operations. Year after year, analysts predict rapid growth, and while the devops movement has grown at a steady pace, it hasn’t yet caught fire among more mainstream organizations. Here, the blame largely falls on those businesses that have failed to understand devops and how it can provide significant value to their operations.

Devops has evolved from a methodology to bring developers and operations teams together into a strategy for transforming an entire business into a single operational entity. By facilitating greater communication, collaboration and integration across the organization, devops significantly improves the agility of IT service delivery and simplifies IT management while optimizing costs.

Microservices has been making waves among forward-thinking application development organizations since the term was first coined in 2011. A few short years later, microservices is on the verge of going mainstream, as, according to a recent survey from Nginx, 36 percent of enterprises surveyed are currently using microservices, with another 26 percent in the research phase. But what exactly is microservices architecture, and is it right for your organization’s culture, skills, and needs?

Here we take a look at seven reasons you should consider microservices for your next application development project — and five hurdles you’ll have to clear to be successful.

Microsoft Windows may be the dominant player on the desktop, but the rapidly increasing open source software market—especially for admin and dev tools—clearly favors Linux. Not to mention the mobile market, where Android uses Linux variants. If you’re a developer on Windows, the drumbeat to get hip to Linux capabilities keeps getting louder.

Over the years, Microsoft has introduced various workarounds for using Linux capabilities on Windows, such as PowerShell with SSH and Cygwin and MSYS. Running Linux inside a virtual machine is another option. But VMs consume a significant amount of resources and don’t provide a first-class Linux experience, as you can’t edit local files or get full access to local drives, for example.

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Must-have devops tools for Windows adminsMon, 19 Dec 2016 03:00:00 -0800Adam BertramAdam Bertram
Without automation, there would be no devops. How organizations implement automation—from continuous delivery to automated testing to release pipelines—differs wildly, but the fundamental divergence in approaches begins at the operating system. When it comes to Windows vs. Linux, devops is a bit different.

]]>(Insider Story)https://www.cio.com/article/3151495/must-have-devops-tools-for-windows-admins.html
IDG InsiderReview: Ansible shows the beefWed, 14 Sep 2016 03:00:00 -0700Adam BertramAdam BertramAt a time when the configuration management market was dominated by Puppet and Chef, an open source project called Ansible emerged with a simpler approach to automating IT environments. An agentless system that was easy to learn, Ansible quickly earned a name for itself. Before long, the developers behind the project formed a company to offer commercial support. That company -- first known as AnsibleWorks, then Ansible -- was acquired by open source leader Red Hat in October 2015.

Docker. Ansible offers modules for building and running Docker containers, orchestrating containers across a Swarm cluster, and managing Docker images. There are advantages to building Docker images from Ansible playbooks instead of Dockerfiles. When you build an image from a Dockerfile, the application or environment can only be deployed in a Docker container. But when you build an image using Ansible playbooks, the environments can easily be replicated on any infrastructure -- bare metal, cloud instance, virtual machine, or Vagrant.

]]>(Insider Story)https://www.cio.com/article/3119346/review-ansible-shows-the-beef.html
IDG InsiderReview: Chef 12 fires up devopsWed, 17 Aug 2016 03:00:00 -0700Adam BertramAdam Bertram
Two of the most important tasks in a data center are server provisioning and configuration management. At one time, administrators spent a significant amount of time physically deploying servers and network infrastructure, followed by even more minutes and hours manually configuring hundreds or even thousands of nodes. Then they spent an additional chunk of the day troubleshooting and fixing the errors they introduced by configuring all of these systems with their fat fingers.

Chef clients are generally installed on Windows machines using the MSI package. Today, a number of resources specific to Windows come with Chef out-of-the-box. For example:

]]>(Insider Story)https://www.cio.com/article/3096279/essential-azure-automation-tricks-for-windows-admins.html
IDG InsiderCareer makeover: From ops to devopsThu, 03 Mar 2016 03:00:00 -0800Adam BertramAdam BertramLong ago, in a IT operations model far, far away, businesses built their data centers. Rows and rows of server racks humming away in closets tangled with cables -- that was IT’s lifeblood. It was a time when virtualization meant that thing a couple of gung-ho admins toyed with on an old HP DL360 server destined for the garbage bin.

Devops is all about culture, with groups of teams working in concert toward a common goal. But as opposed to some workplace cultures, there are certain traits and talents all devops team members must have in common. You could be the best software developer or system administrator in the world, but if you don't possess "devops talents" you'll soon find that you stick out like a sore thumb and any devops shop worth its salt will likely give you the boot.

High-performing devops shops fire on all cylinders, with each team member committed to the overall mission. When one team member doesn't inherently believe in the mission, they can soon find themselves holding up the pipeline and becoming the bottleneck in what would otherwise be a successful deployment strategy.

Devops is a transformative ethos that many companies are putting to their advantage. As with anything that hinges on culture, however, it can be too easy to slap together a few tools, sprinkle in new processes, and call yourself a devops-fueled organization. After all, saying that your company embraces devops and regularly practices devops techniques is popular nowadays, and it can serve as great PR for bringing in great talent to your team. But in truth, many companies -- and technical recruiters -- that are proclaiming their devotion to devops from the hilltops aren’t really devops organizations.

Here we take a look at some of the most common misconceptions and flawed implementations of devops. Chances are, your company has fallen prey to at least one of them. That doesn’t necessarily mean you aren't practicing devops. It simply means you have a ways to go before your company can fulfill the promise. Devops isn't an award or title you can achieve. It's a philosophy, culture, and way of approaching the task of shipping code.

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Get started with Windows PowerShell DSCWed, 25 Nov 2015 03:00:00 -0800Adam BertramAdam Bertram
In today's cloud-centric world, we’re seeing an explosion in the number of servers under IT management. Virtual machines made servers cheap, and containers will push prices down further. As a result, businesses can afford to deploy a server for every new need, but they can no longer afford to manage servers individually. Your servers no longer garner individual attention but are simply soldiers in a huge resource pool, dutifully fulfilling the resource requests of the data center.

PowerShell can be a daunting tool to master for Windows admins used to working with the GUI. But as I discussed in our hands-on PowerShell intros for Windows Server and Exchange admins, adding even a little PowerShell into your daily mix can save a ton of effort.

Here, I’m going to concentrate on some of the fundamentals of PowerShell as a language to help you take your PowerShell skills to the next level. I won't cover technology-specific topics like how to manage Active Directory, Exchange, or IIS, nor will I cover specific PowerShell cmdlets. Instead, I will drill into the semantics of the language to show a few key techniques that you can put into your scripts today. Follow along and let's make your PowerShell scripts the best they can be.

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The power of PowerShell: An intro for Exchange adminsThu, 22 Oct 2015 03:00:00 -0700Adam BertramAdam Bertram
Managing Exchange can be a significant time sink, and you may be surprised to find that much of the time spent administering Exchange is pure waste -- unless, that is, you’re already tapping PowerShell.

]]>(Insider Story)https://www.cio.com/article/2996283/the-power-of-powershell-an-intro-for-exchange-admins.html
IDG InsiderThe power of PowerShell: An intro for Windows Server adminsMon, 12 Oct 2015 03:00:00 -0700Adam BertramAdam Bertram
Until recently, a clear delineation existed between Windows system administrators and developers. You’d never catch a system administrator writing a single line of code, and you’d never catch a developer bringing up a server. Neither party dared to cross this line in Windows environments. Nowadays, with the devops movement spreading like wildfire, that line is fading away.